As New Hampshire Home Prices Hit a Record $575,000, Goodlander Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Cut the Delays Driving Up the Cost of Building a Home

85% of Granite State households cannot afford the median home. Goodlander’s bipartisan Build More Homes Act, co-led with Republican Congressman Jefferson Shreve, would put pre-approved home designs that save builders time and money under the microscope, so more communities can use what works

Concord, N.H. — Today, Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander (NH-02) introduced the bipartisan Build More Homes Act to attack one of the most expensive and least visible obstacles to building a home in New Hampshire: the months a homebuilder is often forced to spend drawing up plans and waiting for them to be reviewed before a single shovel goes in the ground.

The bill, which Goodlander is leading with Congressman Jefferson Shreve (R-IN-06), directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct the first nationwide review of housing “pattern books” — catalogs of pre-reviewed, permit-ready home designs that let builders skip costly custom design work and get approved faster, while giving towns and cities homes that fit the character of their neighborhoods. 

This bill takes aim at some of the most preventable costs in homebuilding: architecture, review, and delay.

“New Hampshire is in a full-blown housing crisis: 85% of households across our state are priced out of this cornerstone of the American Dream,” said Congresswoman Goodlander. “Nurses, teachers, firefighters, electricians, and hardworking people of all ages are being pushed out of the communities they love and the communities that depend on them. I’m using every tool I have to lower the sky-high housing costs New Hampshire families face and make it cheaper and faster to build the homes we urgently need. Our bipartisan Build More Homes Act is about cutting costs and red tape, and learning from communities like Lebanon that are already showing us what works.”

A Full-Blown Housing Crisis

New Hampshire’s housing crisis has never been worse. According to Housing is New Hampshire’s Future, the report New Hampshire Housing released last month:

• The median single-family home hit a record $575,000 in June 2026. A family needs to earn about $189,000 a year to afford it, and only 15% of New Hampshire households — and just 4% of renters — earn that much.
• The median rent statewide is $2,011 a month. A worker needs to earn $38.67 an hour to afford it, while the typical Granite Stater earns about $26 an hour.
• Prices across the Northeast have risen about 28% — gasoline 67%, food 31% — while median household income has grown only about 4% after inflation since February 2020.
• New Hampshire added 25,872 homes from 2020 through 2025, just 39% of what the state needs by 2030. The state is building about 5,174 homes a year; it needs more than 8,100 a year to catch up.

What Builders Are Up Against

New Hampshire’s homebuilders face rising costs at every step. President Trump’s tariffs have jacked up the price of lumber, and builders estimate recent tariffs add roughly $10,900 to the cost of a typical new home. His war in Iran has driven up the price of the diesel that hauls materials to every job site. Moreover, government regulation now accounts for $131,734 — more than 1 in every 4 dollars (26.4%) — of the average price of a new single-family home, according to a June 2026 study by the National Association of Home Builders. That’s up from $93,870 in 2021, the biggest jump NAHB has ever recorded between its studies. And 94% of developers say complying with regulations delays their projects, by about 7 months on average — exactly the kind of delay pre-approved designs are built to cut.

Goodlander’s Build More Homes Act

Pre-approved designs go straight at the “soft costs” of architecture, review, and delay. Communities with these programs most often report savings of $5,000 to $10,000 per homeand approvals that come weeks to months faster, according to a May 2026 Pew report that identified more than 40 jurisdictions using them. But the Congressional Research Service has found that there has been little systematic research into the impacts of these designs. Goodlander’s Build More Homes Act closes that gap, so towns, builders, and Congress know what saves the most money and gets homes built fastest.

In Lebanon, New Hampshire, the city’s Pattern Zones initiative pairs pre-approved, code-compliant designs for duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings with rules tailored to existing neighborhoods, making room for new homes on underused lots while preserving neighborhood character. Next door, Vermont’s 802 Homes initiative is building a statewide catalog of small-home and multi-unit designs for both traditional and off-site construction; Maine enacted legislation requiring the preparation of pre-approved building types for municipalities to adopt; and Bangor already offers pre-approved plans for accessory dwelling units, triplexes, and fourplexes. Repeatable designs also open the door for factory-built homes, connecting housing production to the region’s manufacturing economy and to pioneering New Hampshire companies that already build homes off-site.

The bill builds on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Goodlander helped get across the finish line this summer and which created a Pattern Book Grant Program based on a provision she cosponsored. That program’s required research is limited to the communities that receive grants. The Build More Homes Act broadens the lens to programs nationwide, helping policymakers and communities measure how these designs affect the time and cost of building housing.

Fighting to Lower Housing Costs for New Hampshire

“I came to Congress to lower costs, and housing is where families feel it most,” said Goodlander. “I helped get the ROAD to Housing Act into law. I’m taking on the corporate landlords using algorithms to rig rents, because I did that work at the Justice Department. And I’m working with Republicans and Democrats to clear away every rule that makes it slower and more expensive to build a home in New Hampshire. I won’t stop until every Granite Stater has a fair shot at a home they can afford.”

The Build More Homes Act is the latest step in Goodlander’s fight to bring down housing costs:

• Got the biggest housing law in years across the finish line. Goodlander helped passthe bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act through the House, sent it to the President’s desk, and saw it become law in July 2026 — including 6 provisions she cosponsored to speed up homebuilding with pre-approved designs, cut red tape for rural housing, expand modular and manufactured homes, support resident-owned communities, help veterans use their home-loan benefits, and clarify Build America, Buy America rules for the HOME program.

• Cutting costly delays for affordable housing. With Republican Rep. Mike Flood, Goodlander introduced the Build Housing Affordably Act to study and temporarily pause federal sourcing rules that are delaying affordable housing projects, and to force faster waiver decisions. The bill is backed by more than 30 national housing organizations, including the National Council of State Housing Agencies, the National Association of Home Builders, and Habitat for Humanity International.

• Taking on corporate landlords rigging rents. Goodlander leads the End Rent Fixing Act to outlaw the algorithmic price-fixing tools that cost renters at least $3.8 billion in 2023 — the same practices she took on at the Justice Department.

• Cutting red tape on manufactured homes. Goodlander joined Republicans to pass the bipartisan Affordable HOMES Act to remove federal rules that drive up the cost of manufactured housing for first-time buyers, young families, and seniors.

• Financing more homes. Goodlander helped introduce the bipartisan SUPPLY Act to help homeowners finance accessory dwelling units, and is an original cosponsor of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act to expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which has helped NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire alone build 550 apartments. She also cosponsored the Empty Lots to Housing Act to turn surplus public land into homes.

• Protecting Granite Staters at risk of losing their homes. Goodlander helped deliver more than $14 million to New Hampshire organizations fighting homelessness, pressed HUD to prevent 170,000 people from losing their homes in the dead of winter, and joined the delegation last month in urging HUD to release overdue housing funds.

• Bringing New Hampshire’s voices to Washington. Goodlander convened builders, lenders, and housing advocates at a Concord housing roundtable, launched the Lowering Costs Caucus, welcomed $500,000 to create workforce housing for health care staff at Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, and called on the President to cut tariffs on building materials and act on the housing crisis.

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